The current state of a kingdom

Today we will have a tour down history of one of the greatest countries in the historical time - one that was refered to as the “cradle of civilization” - Iraq

Hanh Ngo (Monash University)
09-12-2020

Hello! and welcome to the second blog post of “New things per day” series. In this blog post, we will get to know another Middle East country - Iraq. Some of you may have heard of the country, could be of either good or not so good things. Today we will try to explore the country judment - free and in a pair of fresh eyes. Also, we will be using a new package today - the “leaftime” which served as a really nice add - ons to the “leaflet” package and allow you to automate you leaflet map. All credit go to the creator timelyportfolio for his amazing creation.

Let’s get started!

Everything you need to know about Iraq

Irad used to be regarded as the “cradle of civilization” of the Middle Ages. The country is a home to many heritage and historic sites, originating back from the golden time of the Ottoman regime. Some of the cultural heritage we may have heard of would include the Hanging garden in Babylon, the Erbil Citadel, the Samarra Archaeological City….

The Citadel of Ebril

Figure 1: The Citadel of Ebril

Source: Hussam Mustafa

However, looking at the country now, all we see is a turbulence of time of wars, fightings and violences. Hundreds of Iraq people fled the country to run away from the terrorists, people died and lost their homes amid the bombing.

In the next section, i will try to recap some of the highlights of the Iraq’s contemporary current situation based on the choronological order. I handpicked only events that i believed directly led to the current state of Iraq. Before I start, i want you to answer this question yourself: “How do you make of Iraq? Is it a poor country torned by wars with high children mortality rate, poor facility, high iliteracy rate and ect..”. Please keep your answer in mind and proceed.

The history starts

The story of Iraq dated back in the 18s when the Ottoman Empired collapsed and Britain took over control of the country. From that moment, a series of religion, ethnicity and power conflicts happened non - stop that derived the country far away from being the “cradle of civilization” that it once was.

Kurdish Internal conflict

Kurdistan is a non-governmental region and one of the largest stateless nations in the world. Kurdistan positioned in the north of Iraq. The region was a product of conflicts between several of countries and the Kurds to claim control over the territory. Up until today, conflicts between the Government and the Kurds- supported activist groups still occur, and most of them involved the use of gunfires and violence.

Portions of the region are recognized by two countries: Iran, where the province of Kordestan lies; and northern Iraq, site of the autonomous region known as Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) or Iraqi Kurdistan. The people populated this area are the Kurds, who were mostly nomandics before the break down of the Ottoman Empire.

Terrorists

As of today, Iraq is still torned by many terrorists activities. The Central Intelligence agency (CIA) of America has pointed out that the country currently hosts 5 home- based terrorist groups and 2 foreign - based terrorist groups, one of which you might have heard a lot in the media - the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS). With the

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) of the United States has tried to put together all of the political violence events and some relevant non - relevant events happened everyday around the world. I obtained a list for Iraq from their database, which can be downloaded here, for the period of 2016 - the most recently of 2020. Using this dataset, i tried to visualise the spread of the terrorist attacks in the territory of Iraq, showing how the country have suffered from the acts for terrorism.

First we have a look at the dataset provided by the ACLED:


Rows: 21,511
Columns: 34
$ data_id          <int> 7191666, 7191247, 7191248, 7191813, 719155…
$ iso              <int> 368, 368, 368, 368, 368, 368, 368, 368, 36…
$ event_id_cnty    <fct> IRQ26318, IRQ26313, IRQ26316, IRQ26305, IR…
$ event_id_no_cnty <int> 26318, 26313, 26316, 26305, 26308, 26301, …
$ start            <date> 2020-09-05, 2020-09-05, 2020-09-05, 2020-…
$ end              <date> 2020-09-07, 2020-09-07, 2020-09-07, 2020-…
$ year             <int> 2020, 2020, 2020, 2020, 2020, 2020, 2020, …
$ time_precision   <int> 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, …
$ event_type       <fct> Battles, Explosions/Remote violence, Battl…
$ sub_event_type   <fct> Armed clash, Remote explosive/landmine/IED…
$ actor1           <fct> Police Forces of Iraq (2020-) Iraqi Nation…
$ assoc_actor_1    <fct> , , Private Security Forces (Iraq), , , , …
$ inter1           <int> 1, 3, 1, 8, 1, 1, 1, 8, 4, 4, 8, 1, 8, 2, …
$ actor2           <fct> Unidentified Armed Group (Iraq), Civilians…
$ assoc_actor_2    <fct> , Military Forces of the United States (20…
$ inter2           <int> 3, 7, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 0, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 7, …
$ interaction      <int> 13, 37, 12, 28, 12, 12, 12, 80, 24, 44, 28…
$ region           <fct> Middle East, Middle East, Middle East, Mid…
$ country          <fct> Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, …
$ admin1           <fct> Thi-Qar, Baghdad, Diyala, Erbil, Sala al-D…
$ admin2           <fct> Rifai, Kadhimiya, Khanaqin, Mergasur, Sama…
$ admin3           <lgl> NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA…
$ location         <fct> Rifai, Baghdad - Kadhimiya, Qaryat Al Qala…
$ latitude         <dbl> 31.7213, 33.3805, 34.3671, 36.8431, 34.195…
$ longitude        <dbl> 46.1102, 44.3462, 45.2447, 44.3009, 43.885…
$ geo_precision    <int> 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, …
$ source           <fct> Al Sumaria TV, Al Sumaria TV; Yaqein, Nati…
$ source_scale     <fct> National, National, National, Other, Natio…
$ notes            <fct> "On 5 September 2020, Iraqi Intelligence f…
$ fatalities       <int> 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, 1, …
$ timestamp        <int> 1599528935, 1599528934, 1599528934, 159952…
$ iso3             <fct> IRQ, IRQ, IRQ, IRQ, IRQ, IRQ, IRQ, IRQ, IR…
$ group            <chr> "non-IS", "non-IS", "IS", "non-IS", "IS", …
$ color            <chr> "blue", "blue", "red", "blue", "red", "red…

ACLED divided the event types into three major groups: Violent events, Demonstrations (which includes protests and riots) and Non - violent actions. A total of 26,235 events were recorded from 2016 to 2020. For the purpose of this section, i filtered only the Violent events to get 21,511 events fitting into the category, which made up a whooping c.82% of total events recorded!

I only used some of the variables featured in the dataset for this section. Also i created some more to facilitate my construction of the map, they are:

Next up, we look at the animated map of all violence events that took place in Iraq from 2016 to 2020:


OGR data source with driver: ESRI Shapefile 
Source: "/Users/HanseMac/Desktop/Monash/ETC5523_Communicating_with_data/Blog_entry/my-blog-HanseNgo305/Blog_entry_1/_posts/iraq_situation/IRQ_adm0.shp", layer: "IRQ_adm0"
with 1 features
It has 70 fields
Integer64 fields read as strings:  ID_0 OBJECTID_1

Figure 2: The distribution of terrorists events in Iraq from 2016 to 2020

You can hit the play button in the slider to animate the event map by times. You can also use the forward and backward buttons to control the apprearance of events. By hovering your cursor over the points, you can read the description for each events shown.

Most violent events in Iraq took place in the North East of the country, cluttering around the Kurdistan and the central regions. We can see that a majority of violent events in Iraq came from the ISIS with the red points dominant the map. The density of the events was particularly dense throughout 2016 but situation started to lift up in 2017 as the Iraq Government launched a campaign to take back Mosul - the second biggest city of Iraq the last remaining ISIS stronghold in Iraq in October 2016. By July 2017, Mosul was liberated. By December 2017, the Iraqi militaries announced that the Iraq’s territory was “fully liberated” form the ISIS. From 2018 onwards, we can see that the activities of ISIS were greatly diminished in number in Iraq and the operational area focused mainly on the rural and desert areas.

This animated map time was constructed using the magnificent works of timelyportfolio and his leaftime package. You can visit his github page for more information here and explore the usage of this wonderful package.

Foreign relations:

The relation with Iran

Iraq does not exactly have a sweet and amiable relationship with the neighbour in the past. The two countries started to spark tension from 1980 when Iraq started to invade Iran, which marked the begin of the Iran - Iraq war which lasted for 8 years and was considered the “longest conventional war of the 20th century” The Guardian, 2011. Million people dead from the gunfire in both countries. One of the worst incidents ever happened in the war was the notorious Halabja incident where thousands of people was poisoned by the poison gas used by the Iraqi in an attempt to battle the Kurdish rebels.

The two countries went for another two years of silence until the diplomatic relations improved in 1990. Now the two countries have become close brother in arms to fight against the ISIS.

The relation with US

US started to exhibit its first explicited influence over Iraq in 1990 - at the time the first Gulf War broke down when Iraq invaded Kuwait to seek its oil reserves. US had initiated a massive campaign where military troupes were sent over to force Iraq to withdraw.

The official US invasion started in 2003, which later known as the US war. The US stated the purpose of such invasion was to stop Iraq from using weapons of mass destruction eccessively.On October of the same year, a report was issued by the US itself confirming there was no presence of mass destruction weapons in Iraq. However, the US military stayed. During this time, video footages of US military torturing Iraq prisonners were leaked that left the whole world shocked.

A significant turns in the relation between the two nations occurred in 2011 when the new US president Barack Obama had decided to withdraw all the troops from Iraq. In the course of 8 years, more than 100,000 civillans lost their life and the US lost around 4,500 troops. [Source]((https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2020/1/3/timeline-a-history-of-us-iraq-relations-since-2003)

In 2014, The US made presence in Iraq again, but this time it was for a more friendly purpose. The US military forces arrived to support the Iraqi government battled against the ISIS. By December 2017, Iraq declared they had successfully liberated the country from the terrorist group.

As of 2020, the two countries fell into tension followed by the death of top Iranian commanders in the strikes occurred in Baghdad’s international airport under the order of US President Donald Trump. “Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vows severe revenge”. (https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2020/1/3/timeline-a-history-of-us-iraq-relations-since-2003)

The Covid-19 impact

Figure 3: COVID-19 in Iraq

And finally we have a few brief about the Covid situation in Iraq as of the latest date. Iraq first confirmed a positive case on 22 February in Najaf. In May, the country observed a terrible outburst which drove the total cases from around 2000 in the start of May to nearly 50,000 in just two months. By 12 September 2020, 7,881 cases had died, accounted for c.3% of the total confirmed cases.

In April, before the outbreak, the Iraq Government was claimed to not reveal the correct statistics. The Iraquis’s skepticism of the Government was second after a Reuters news agency was fined and suspended for three months after this agency claimed that the statistics announced by the Government were not trustworthy. An UN statement arrived on the 3 April had required the Government to provide supports for their independence reports on the infection. Later, the Government admitted the true number of confirmed cases could range from 3,000 to 9,000 as opposed of 772 announced on the 4 April, explaining that such act was to demotivate civillans from fighting the pandemic and calling the decision on sanctioning the Reuters agency “regrettable”. (Reuters, 2020).

How life was affected in Iraq? What does the data tell us?

You have read a long summary of the situation of Iraq, and i curious what do you think of the country? The Country was full of conflicts, of wars, ravaged by the terrorists, affected the by dropping in oil price and now sufferred from the Covid pandemic. Before we start looking at some numbers I want you to try answering the questions below and remember tha answer as you make your way through the rest of this blog:

  1. How many girls do you think in Iraq can read and write at the age 15 and over?
  1. What is the life expectancy of Iraq as of 2020?
  1. How many people in Iraq have access to improved drinking water source?*
  1. How many people in Iraq have access to electricity?
  1. How many people in Iraq have internet access?

To answer these question myself, at first I used the UN Population Censuses’s Datasets to locate the demographics information for Iraq. To my surprise, no data was provided for the country in any year. I then tried to find another way around and came accros the CIA’s annual report called “World fact book” in which they will try to compact in some crucial and usefull information that would describe a nation’s situation in a year.
The information was not completed for all of the year, but definitelly helpful to picture out the how life in Iraq would look like. Below is the summary of some important statistics from the most recent report of 2020:

Table 1: Iraq facts summary
component fact position_in_world_ranking
population 38,872,655 36
population growth rate (%) 2.16 37
birth rate (per 1000 populations) 26 47
death rate (per 1000 populations) 3.9 215
infant mortality rate (per 1000 live births) 19.5 80
life expectancy (years) 72.6 152
access to improved drinking water source (%) 97.9 NA
physicians density (per 1000 populations) 0.84 NA
hospital bed density (per 1000 populations) 1.3 NA
access to improved sanitation facility (%) 95.2 NA
literacy (% of population) 50.1 NA
unemployment (ages 15-24) (%) 26 NA
internet users (%) 49 38
electricity access (%) 100 NA

I have highlighted the answers for the questions above. How many did you get correct?
If you get most of them correct, congratulations! You are equipped with a very strong sense of the world. If you did badly? You are not the only one, i can assure you.

Looking at the demographics, you will see that even though have been raveging from the continuous wars and conflicts, Iraq possessed a quite high standard of living. That is to say these standards had been worsening from the past due to the consequences of a series of internal conficts, international wars and invasions. For example, literacy (measured by the percentage of people of the age 15 and over can read and write) of Iraq used to reach 71% in men and 45% in women in 1995, now in 2020, the proportions are 56.2% and 44% respectively. Infant mortality rate has improved from 62.49 deaths in 2000 to 19.5 deaths in 2020 - an impressive step over the course of only 20 years!

The country still has a long way to go, with the unemployment rate really high (the situation is even worse by gender when 63.3% of women were unemployed), physicians density low and hospital bed density low. However, we have to acknowledge that Iraq’s condition may be much more better then how we may deem the country to be. The Covid 19 and other existing conflicts will certainly and temporarily get into the way of the country’s development, but will in no way, stop the country from moving forwards.

Tribute to “Factfullness”

The set of questions was inspired by the book “Factfullness” of professor Hans Rosling. In all those years of teaching and being a doctor, Hans had asked thousands of persons the questions about the fact of the world as i has tried to asked you before. He wanted to highlight the fact that people’s knowledge is severly outdated. That what they thought they know about the world today was actually of the world many years ago. Such ignorance clouded the way people saw the world, making them unable to see the improvement, the revolution, the beautilful and the best of the place we are living.

Some of his questions may surprise you, for example: how poverty has changed in the last 20 years? Alomst doubled, remain or almost halved? or how many percent of 1-year-old children in the world get vaccinated? 20, 50 or 80 percent? Only 7% of people asked answered the first question correctly and 13% for the second question (The answer is almost halved and 80%, by the way).

“Factfullness” is his efforts to “eradicate ignorance” from people. I would certainly recommend this reading. Hopefully you will feel that your sense of thinking will alter by the time you finished the book as professor Hans would hope.

Thank you for reading this second blog! Again, any comments and suggestions are always welcomed!

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